Judith Allnatt

The Moon Field is a historical novel set during World War I, portraying the impact of the war on two young women and one man in a Lake District village. Kitty Ashwell is the postmaster’s daughter and works at the Post Office with her parents and other staff including postman George Farrell. He is smitten with beautiful, upper class Violet, but Violet was hoping to get engaged to Edmund who has gone off to fight.

The story includes accounts of work at the village post office, which I found quite interesting, of the fighting as George soon enlists, and of how events affect the characters.

This was an enjoyable enough read but quite predictable .… (mais)

Another random selection! Judith Allnatt's ghostly novel, intricately researched and beautifully told, is the history of a house in the Northamptonshire village of Weedon Bec and the mothers and daughters, two hundred years apart, whose lives are intertwined with the mulberry trees in the garden. Newly single mum of two Rosie moves into her late mother's house and learns starts to delve into family secrets hidden there. In 1812, a tyrannical silk master ruling a factory with an iron rod sets against two young orphans and their elder sister, pulling the family apart.

I got completely caught up in both strands of the story, from the Dickensian drama of Effie, Beulah (fantastic name) and Tobias Fiddement in the early nineteenth century to Rosie Milford and her two children in the present day. Judith Allnatt has a talent for detail and description that not only brings her characters vividly to life, but had me looking up the history of the real Weedon Bec, so taken was I with her evocative setting. Usually with 'time slip' novels, I find myself enjoying one half of the story more than the other, but I was equally rapt with both threads of the narrative.

Only one minor niggle - birth certificates for twins give the time of birth as well as the date. That angle of the story was slightly far-fetched, I thought. But otherwise - captivating!… (mais)